How the joke was on Enoch Powell

Monday 30 June 2014 12:38 BST

Mary Beard launched her latest book, Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling and Cracking Up, with an event at the British Museum. By the end, as she put it to the audience, “most of you are laughing at yourselves for spending an hour listening to cheap jokes that are more than a thousand years old”.

Beard revealed that Enoch Powell cribbed one of his few jokes from a Roman book of jokes called Laughter Lover, published in the 5th century AD. Powell went to have his hair cut by the House of Commons barber, who was notoriously chatty: “How would you like it cut, Mr Powell?”